EW Role Call: Pamela Anderson
The former 'Baywatch' babe's tongue-in-cheek career
By Michael Slezak
Entertainment Weekly
(Entertainment Weekly) -- Pamela Anderson is blonde, buxom, and ... funny?
She may have started as Tim Allen's mostly silent sidekick on "Home Improvement," but she's got plenty to say in Fox's new sitcom "Stacked" (Wednesdays, 8:30 p.m.); she plays Skyler Dayton, a reformed party girl who takes a job in a family-run bookstore.
In promos for the show, she enters a room to the tune of the Scorpions' ''Rock You Like a Hurricane'' -- an apt metaphor for the turbulence that seemed to be going on behind the scenes. Not only was the new series not screened for critics, but "That Thing You Do's" Tom Everett Scott was replaced by Elon Gold as one of the leads just days before the scheduled airdate, and the pilot had to be reshot.
During the 15 years since she arrived in Hollywood, the 37-year-old native of Vancouver Island has perfected a campy, self-deprecating image, in which her larger-than-life proportions are often the punch line. Aside from appearing on 11 Playboy covers, she made the most of her assets as a lifeguard in Lycra on "Baywatch" and as a biker in a bustier in "Barb Wire."
But -- surprise! -- because she's always in on the laugh, she sometimes gets positive notice for her acting. Anderson even made it on to the New York Times bestseller list with her 2004 novel "Star," which she'll follow with a sequel "Starstruck" this summer.
Get a refresher course on Anderson's best-known roles -- and her glowing reviews -- in Entertainment Weekly's gallery
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EW.com: All about Pamela Anderson
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